No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
The application of network-based GIS tools to investigate spatial variations in the provision of sporting facilities
Abstract
Methods whereby access to facilities can be captured in order to support national policies geared towards promoting sports participation and help plan the provision of local facilities are urgently needed. Objective measures derived from the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) can be used to gain an understanding of spatial variations in the location and quality of sporting infrastructure. The aim of this study is to draw on a recreational database for Wales to demonstrate the benefits of ‘enhanced two-step floating catchment area’ (E2SFCA) techniques for gaining a wider understanding of variations in potential demand for sport facilities in the light of available supply. A practical demonstration showing how such tools can be used to examine variations in provision in relation to potential demand arising from targeted demographic groups is illustrated using the case study of spatial access to lawn bowling greens, an increasingly popular leisure pursuit in Wales.
... The number of facilities existing within a given administrative area is simply counted in this approach to measure the accessibility of the area (Talen and Anselin 1998;Talen 2003). Sometimes, supply to demand ratios are calculated instead of a simple count in this approach; where supply and demand are the number of facilities available and total population inside any area, respectively (Geurs and van Wee 2004;Guagliardo 2004;Langford et al. 2018;McGrail and Humphreys 2009). This approach is also called 'population to provider' approach and is popular for evaluating spatial accessibility because it is easy to understand, simple, straightforward, and the required data are readily available (Langford et al. 2018). ...
... Sometimes, supply to demand ratios are calculated instead of a simple count in this approach; where supply and demand are the number of facilities available and total population inside any area, respectively (Geurs and van Wee 2004;Guagliardo 2004;Langford et al. 2018;McGrail and Humphreys 2009). This approach is also called 'population to provider' approach and is popular for evaluating spatial accessibility because it is easy to understand, simple, straightforward, and the required data are readily available (Langford et al. 2018). Two limitations of this approach include: (1) it does not consider the differentiation in accessibility within the area of concern, as it assumes that accessibility to facilities inside the area is spatially uniform, and (2) it does not consider spatial externalities associated with facilities which means people from outside the area can also use the facilities along with the people who live within it (Langford et al. 2018;Talen and Anselin 1998;Wang 2012). ...
... This approach is also called 'population to provider' approach and is popular for evaluating spatial accessibility because it is easy to understand, simple, straightforward, and the required data are readily available (Langford et al. 2018). Two limitations of this approach include: (1) it does not consider the differentiation in accessibility within the area of concern, as it assumes that accessibility to facilities inside the area is spatially uniform, and (2) it does not consider spatial externalities associated with facilities which means people from outside the area can also use the facilities along with the people who live within it (Langford et al. 2018;Talen and Anselin 1998;Wang 2012). ...
The available approaches for measuring accessibility are rigid and complex in nature, and mostly impractical for decision-makers as they require a large number of data, logistics support, and technical knowledge. Therefore, this study seeks to propose a flexible and practical approach for quantifying and ranking the accessibility to market facilities in rural areas. A three-stage multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach is proposed to fulfill the objective. The first stage involves the identification of factors that influence the accessibility to rural market facilities. The next stage involves the use of the Constant-Sum Paired-Comparison Method (CSPCM) to determine the priority of each identified factor. The third stage adopts the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to quantify and rank the accessibility to market facilities of rural areas. To illustrate a real-world application, accessibility to market facilities in ten sub-districts of Bangladesh have been quantified and ranked by using this proposed approach. Results of this application support the claim that MCDM approach is a practical, flexible, and reliable approach that would better assist the policy-makers to identify poor accessible rural areas.
... However, the existing literature does not distinguish these differences in spatial extent (Cheng and Bertolini, 2013;Merlin and Hu, 2017;Ong and Miller, 2005). The spatial interaction model is a powerful tool to estimate the accessibility to public facilities (Dai and Wang, 2011;Ding et al., 2015;Higgs et al., 2013;Langford et al., 2018;Wan et al., 2012a;Wang, 2000). Spatial interaction is a broad term that includes any movement or relationship resulting from human activity (Haynes and Fotheringham, 1984). ...
... Another improvement by Wan et al. (2012b) is the 3SFCA that adds one extra step, and which considered the selection weight and population-job ratio. All these contributions to improving the 2SFCA method make it popular to evaluate the spatial access in transportation and public health studies (Ding et al., 2015;Higgs et al., 2013;Langford et al., 2018). ...
Current quantitative measures of job accessibility rarely consider the interaction between job opportunities and labor force, and the effects of dynamic travel mode choice. Drawing upon multiple open-source datasets, we develop a job accessibility index by extending the two-step floating catchment area method (2SFCA). The job accessibility indices are calculated for different commuting scenarios concerning distance, time, and travel modes. The results suggest that job accessibility is very sensitive to travel modes, and using a single travel mode would contribute to a biased job accessibility index. The job accessibility indices with combined travel modes are more geographically balanced than using a single travel mode. Furthermore, the new index is employed to examine the spatial pattern of job accessibility and explore the relationship between job accessibility, housing, and population in the Pudong district, Shanghai. The new job accessibility indices manifest the impacts of ring roads on the spatial distribution of job accessibility. A comparative analysis shows that the floating population has poor driving-based job accessibility but can access job opportunities using public transit. Also, poor job accessibility leads to low rent prices but has little impact on medium-high rent. Both transit-based and drive-based job accessibility indices are positively related to housing prices. Our study highlights the importance of considering dynamic travel mode choice in job accessibility research. The research outcomes also contribute to the literature on spatial mismatch by revealing the unique relationship between job accessibility, housing, and population in urban China.
... The E2SFCA method was applied using ArcGIS and its Network Analyst extension but did not include multiple forms of transport. Another FCA-based study of access to sports facilities was conducted by Langford, Higgs, and Radcliffe (2018); again, this study implemented its solution in ArcGIS and used a bespoke plug-in tool to calculate E2FCA scores by leveraging the Network Analyst extension within the solution. ...
... OTP proves a beneficial solution to multi-modal approaches within accessibility measurements, including more advanced E2SFCA used within this study. (2012), or Langford et al. (2018), but which was implemented to include the integration of public transport data. ...
This study describes the design and implementation of a web‐based infrastructure built on open‐source components to enable the computation of accessibility scores. It can be adapted to any form of service provision that is represented as geo‐located points. The solution aims to extend previous attempts to measure and analyse geographical accessibility in a web‐based environment. This design integrates a new approach for generating the variables required in calculating accessibility scores, while allowing the whole system to potentially remain as an open‐source and open‐data solution. The design allows accessibility scores to be computed using simultaneously both public and private transport modes, thus presenting a more accurate assessment than that obtained from standard single‐mode solutions. The infrastructure is described through a consideration of each fundamental component, demonstrating how travel distances and alternative journeys are generated and applied to the accessibility model. Results produced by the solution enable the comparison of accessibility scores generated from alternative modes of transport and are illustrated using a case study to investigate access to sports facilities in Wales. This demonstrates how the system can be used to guide further investment and the future management of service infrastructure.
... One study has systematically assessed the spatial coupling relationship between the supply and demand of public services and the distribution of the population using a combination of kernel density analysis, the Gaussian two-step search method, hierarchical analysis, and bivariate spatial autocorrelation analysis [23]. Langford et al. innovatively improved the two-step moving search method to achieve a population-related measure of potential demand-supply dynamics [24]. The service level evaluation method is constantly expanding in practical application. ...
Urbanization in developing countries has led to increasing demands for high-quality public services, highlighting the need for an effective spatial allocation of resources. This study evaluated the spatial distribution of sports facilities in Shanghai’s central urban areas and Pudong New Area, focusing on accessibility, variegation, and coherence at municipal, district, neighborhood, and community levels. The findings reveal that Pudong New Area has higher-quality facilities compared to central areas, with a distinct “southwest-northeast” axis of high-quality sports facilities in Pudong. A multidimensional spatial evaluation framework was developed, offering practical insights for optimizing resource allocation, enhancing accessibility, and addressing supply-side gaps in developing countries.
... Geo-big data, along with GIS offers many opportunities for urban planners and leisure service agencies to strengthen the planning and management of facilities. The application of GIS has proven its applicability in measuring accessibility and equity, identifying underserved areas and populations, and recommending optimal new facilities for various recreational facilities, such as public parks (Nicholls, 2001), outdoor recreation venues (Tarrant & Cordell, 1999) and sports facilities (Langford et al., 2018). ...
Accurate understanding urban leisure spaces (ULS) is crucial for optimizing the allocation of leisure resources. This paper aims to provide a detailed classification of ULS and derive its spatial distribution and morphological characteristics using geographical technology. We constructed a hierarchical classification system for leisure functions and identified 11 types of ULS in Qingdao based on the domination and combination of these functions. Single-function spaces are mainly concentrated in the suburbs with relatively large plots, while multi-function zones are primarily distributed in downtown areas with relatively small plots. Natural-recreational leisure spaces are more complex in shape, while cultural-special leisure spaces are less complex. The uneven distribution of different types of leisure spaces suggests that the government should focus on improving natural leisure spaces in downtown areas and developing diversified leisure spaces in the suburban areas.
... Combined with distance threshold, service catchments are determined and it floats represents a population demand to the other. Accessibility is determined by demand supply ratio estimated from FCA (Langford et al., 2018). These days FCA have been extended to 2SFCA which combines the demand ratio with the demand from other areas within the catchment of the stations, but other methods exist beyond 2SFCA. ...
The paper evaluates the impact of the new additional electric vehicle (EV) charging stations on accessibility to charging in the city of Windsor Ontario. It uses locations and coordinates information of electric vehicle charging stations extracted from the Environmental Canada database combined with details of the new additions by the city, manually abstracted from publications and google. These were spatially aggregated into the city’s Ward along with demographic and stations-per-Ward determined.
Point-in-polygon, floating catchment area - FCA, and network level (travel-time) methods were used to understand variations in accessibility across Wards of the city, considering the existing and a combination of existing and new stations. The study found that the point-in-polygon method tends to overestimate the accessibility of Wards with a low population where kinetic (affluents) resides and could lead to improper identification of Wards highly accessible to charging. Findings from FCA and network accessibility methods highlights caution with the use of the point-in-polygon method which favors low-populated areas. Accessibility analysis using FCA, and network level (travel-time) technique revealed that the addition of new stations in the city does not significantly change accessibility levels. The study found that only a few Wards in the city of Windsor will be benefited from the addition of new stations as the median travel times from Wards to stations did not reduce significantly and larger variations exist around the median times suggesting that the new stations are randomly introduced rather than planned. Multicriteria analysis however aided in ranking of Wards based on available charging infrastructure, EV owned, travel time to stations and population density per Ward. The paper recommends data-driven machine learning approach in measuring accessibility and locating charging infrastructure in the city.
... This is important because more densely populated areas typically have more services and larger capacities; however, there are also more people using these. Due to this capability, several studies utilize 2SFCA for measuring spatial accessibility to services ( Luo & Wang, 2003 ;Ye et al., 2018 ), sports facilities ( Langford et al., 2017 ), green spaces ( Wang & Wang, 2018 ), and jobs ( Xiao et al., 2021 ). ...
The 15 min city (or “X-minute city” in general) concept aims to give people access to all essential services and daily needs (e.g., healthcare, education, etc.) within X minutes of active transportation, to improve transport equity, sustainability, and traffic safety. To date, there is a lack of methods and tools to assess to what degree cities currently, or after implementing policies, comply with the X-minute city concept. This research aims to develop a methodology for quantifying the X-minute city through a metric (CSx) that was developed based on an accessibility framework and tested for cycling mode in the Utrecht region in the Netherlands as a study area. Travel data from the Netherlands mobility panel were analysed to determine input characteristics of the metric, such as the weight of destination types. Standardized gravity-based 2-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) accessibility scores for all destination types were weighted and aggregated into a composite metric that shows relative scores as an X-minute city. The results of the analysis show that 100% of the population in the Utrecht region has access to at least one destination for all 9 destination types within 15 min, whereas this number reduces to 94% within a 10 min cycling threshold; indicating the status of Utrecht as a cycling city with cycling-friendly infrastructure. Furthermore, low-income groups do not have lower cycling accessibility to the services in the 15 min city in the study area, reinforcing the notion that cycling can be an effective solution to reduce transport inequalities. The developed metric can be used to assess cities on their way towards becoming X-minute city, prioritise neighbourhoods to develop, set quantifiable goals, and evaluate planning scenarios.
... The application of FCA metrics has primarily been for health care services, such as primary care (Bauer and Groneberg, 2016), and tertiary care (Wan et al., 2012). However, spatial accessibility of various non-health-related applications has also been assessed using FCA metrics, such as libraries (Higgs et al., 2013) and recre-ation areas (Langford et al., 2018). This application diversity underlines the robustness and utility of the FCA metrics for several applications to consider spatial accessibility (Bryant and Delamater, 2019). ...
Healthcare spatial accessibility requires a better understanding and evaluation, especially during pandemic outbreaks like the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The main goal of this study is to measure and assess community-level spatial accessibility in Amman city to various COVID-19 related healthcare resources that could provide any urgent medical care for suspected or confirmed COVID-19 cases. To address this aim, the Enhanced 2-step floating catchment area (E2SFCA) method combined with several geospatial techniques were performed. The main E2SFCA results show the differences in the capacities and spatial accessibility of health facilities within Amman city, as well as how the variations are captured at different regions. The resulted spatial accessibility scores were presented in interactive Geo-spatial maps, analyzed , and compared for several health resources in public, private, and educational hospitals. The current research findings stated that although there are enough healthcare facilities to service almost the entire city, inappropriate health facility distribution, rather than a lack of resources, has resulted in coverage gaps in some areas. The center zones had been fully serviced, or perhaps over-served, by a large number of facilities. The other zones, on the contrary, were partially served or were even underserved by a certain number of resources.
... Similarly, Higgs et al. (2015) applied the same model to examine the inequality of access to sports facilities among regions with different socioeconomic statuses in Wales. Moreover, Langford et al. (2018) created an add-in tool in ArcGIS to facilitate the calculation process of the E2SFCA. Martori et al. (2020) proposed a quintile cross tabulation of the minimum distance to the playground and the E2SFCA to jointly explain the potential spatial accessibility and potential congestion of the playground among different neighbourhoods. ...
Equitable access to sports services has drawn much attention from policymakers and planners in China, as rapid urbanization and lifestyle changes have caused the pandemic of inactivity. An accurate measure of accessibility will enable the spatial equity of public facility allocation. Existing approaches to measure the spatial accessibility of sports facilities tend to ignore the heterogeneity in potential users’ preferences for facilities, thereby causing a bias in the measurement of accessibility. This paper proposes a multi-preference Gaussian two-step floating catchment area (MG2SFCA) method to measure the spatial accessibility of sports facilities, taking into account different travel modes, catchment sizes, and facility preferences among different age groups. Empirically, we adopted the MG2SFCA method in examining the spatial accessibility of sports facilities among children, young working-age population, old working-age population, and elderly population under walking, cycling, and driving modes in Dongguan. The results indicated a significant spatial disparity in the accessibility to sports facilities, with better accessibility in the north and poorer accessibility in the south. Children have the best access to sports facilities, followed by old working-age population, young working-age population, and older population. In the comparison among different transport modes, the accessibility distribution of sports facilities in walking mode showed the greatest spatial variation, while accessibility in driving mode was the most balanced. The MG2SFCA method is superior to the traditional Gaussian 2SFCA method because the former can capture disadvantaged people’s actual needs for sports facilities more accurately than the latter.
... Methodologically, spatial analysis typically requires the analysis of accessibility, diversity of service facilities and social groups at spatial unit scale associated with public administration. In the case of Chinese urban studies, most studies on sports facilities have analyzed accessibility [51], the relationship between accessibility and frequency of use [52], impacts of facilities on physical exercise [53][54][55] and change of space demand [56]. These studies have not considered the disparity between administrative units or between age groups, so they have contributed less to local urban planning and governance decision-making processes. ...
Health and well-being have become important dimensions of urban sustainability, particularly in countries with rapid urbanization and aging populations. As such, providing opportunities for physical activity and exercise has become a priority in the planning and governance of Healthy City in these countries. Relatively little research has investigated the provision of sports facilities in developing countries. This paper seeks to address this gap by exploring the spatial and social inequality of sports facilities at the urban scale using Nanning City in South China as a case study. Spatial aggregate analyses, including an allocation index, accessibility, diversity, and geographically weighted regression, were applied to mixed data sets from primary and secondary sources from 2018. The results confirmed a strong inequality of sports facilities provision across the study area and between age groups. This study suggests that the reduction of inequality and the improvement of equity and social justice should consider the spatial and social matches between demand and supply, through increasing sports facilities investment intensity and road network density.
... However, spatial accessibility of numerous non-health related applications have also been evaluated using FCA metrics, such as libraries (Higgs, Langford, and Fry 2013), public transportation (Langford, Higgs, and Fry 2012), day care centres (Fransen et al. 2015), and recreation areas (e.g. Dony, Delmelle, and Delmelle 2015;Langford, Higgs, and Radcliffe 2017;Ye et al. 2014). This diversity in application underscores the robustness and usefulness of the FCA metrics to understand spatial accessibility across a variety of applications. ...
Floating catchment area (FCA) metrics are a family of measures used to quantify spatial accessibility. Spatial accessibility fuses the concepts of accessibility and availability to describe the relationship between the supply and demand of resources. FCA metrics have been applied to measure accessibility of numerous amenities including health services, public transportation, and recreation areas. Macro-level data such as census tracts and census blocks are often used to represent population locations in the calculation of FCA metrics. This approach is susceptible to masking geographic variability that may exist at less aggregated levels, such as at the individual level. This research explores how level of data aggregation can impact the measurement and interpretation of FCA based metrics. Our case study uses the E2SFCA method to measure and compare the spatial accessibility of public parks using micro- and macro-level population representations. Our analysis shows a general agreement in the FCA results among various levels of data aggregation. As expected, error in the FCA measurements generally increased as larger areal units were used; however, our results also show a somewhat nuanced picture, as particularities arising from the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem and the gravity-based calculation of the E2SFCA appear to affect the resulting differences among FCA values. Because obtaining and using individual based data can be challenging for researchers, macro-level data are often the only reliable alternative. Our findings provide insight into the limitations associated with using macro-level data to measure and interpret spatial accessibility.
The paper draws upon open-source technologies to present methods of incorporating multiple travel modes into GIS analyses of cumulative opportunity and proximity-based metrics of accessibility. Two case studies are undertaken. The first uses isochrone analysis to evaluate national access to sport facilities expected to appeal to a broad range of ages and abilities. Predictably, urban areas and private car travel record the highest levels of access, but the revelation of geographical patterns in disparities between travel modes may allow transport planners and national and regional sporting bodies to identify where further investment in facilities and transport infrastructure might best be targeted. The second case study uses network tracing of shortest time pathways to consider city level access to greenspaces. Findings here suggest that cycling may offer similar access levels as private car travel, with much poorer outcomes for walking and public transport. Such studies demonstrate how active travel and public transport might be included in holistic GIS analyses to aid policy makers, and those who plan and monitor provision of sporting opportunities, to promote improved levels of access to, and participation in, physical activities within disadvantaged communities. They may also have value in cross-sector approaches that promote the wider health and environmental benefits of using active travel and public transport to access neighbourhood facilities.
In a context where the demand and supply of mail and parcel delivery services are undergoing major changes due to the widespread use of the Internet and digital communications, this paper focuses on the accessibility of postal services through the physical retail network. The accessibility constraints applied to the outlets network of Le Groupe La Poste (the French postal operator responsible for the universal postal service and three other services of general economic interest) are based on a “simplified” approach that considers accessibility only in terms of time or distance‐time. This paper proposes to measure potential spatial accessibility by applying postal supply and potential demand dimensions using a Two‐Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) analysis. Based on an equilibrium between supply and demand through distance function, this method, which is often used in studies of the accessibility of health services, is transposed and adapted into the field of postal activities. It aims to measure accessibility by taking into account the population and population/provider ratio, considering standard postal services provided at service points. While until recently the 2SFCA methods were mostly applied in healthcare contexts, some applications have been developed in non‐health‐related services over the last decade. This paper proposes an original contribution to analyzing variations in the accessibility of postal services. Referring to the “primary postal services” (sales of stamps, letters or parcels postage, remittance of postal items, and so on), it outlines the conditions that activities (or services) must satisfy in order to use the floating catchment area method.
We conducted an ecologic study to determine physical activity resource availability overall and by sociodemographic groups in parts of six states (CA, IL, MD, MN, NC, NY). Data on parks and recreational facilities were collected from 3 sources in 2009-2012. Three measures characterized park and recreational facility availability at the census tract level: presence of ≥1 resource, number of resources, and resource kernel density. Associations between resource availability and census tract characteristics (predominant racial/ethnic group, median income, and proportion of children and older adults) were estimated using linear, binomial, and zero-inflated negative binomial regression in 2014. Pooled and stratified analyses were conducted. The study included 7,139 census tracts, comprising 9.5% of the 2010 US population. Overall the availability of parks and recreational facilities was lower in predominantly minority relative to non-Hispanic white census tracts. Low-income census tracts and those with a higher proportion of children had an equal or greater availability of park resources but fewer recreational facilities. Stratification revealed substantial variation in resource availability by state. The availability of physical activity resources varied by sociodemographic characteristics and across regions. Improved knowledge of resource distribution can inform strategies to provide equitable access to parks and recreational facilities.
Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Inc.
This multi-methods qualitative study aimed to identify environmental factors that influence physical activity participation among young people in Edinburgh, Scotland. School pupils (aged 11-13 years) took part using photography, computer blogs, maps and focus group discussions (FGDs). Eleven computer sessions (n = 131) and 14 FGDs (n = 63) took place. Factors influencing physical activity behaviour included proximity and access to local facilities, family and peers and the school physical activity environment. A variety of facilitators and barriers to participation were also reported. Most notable was the importance of cost and value for money when choosing physical activities which, although more evident among pupils attending schools in areas of low socio-economic status (SES), was relevant across all SES groups. Reporting easy access to sports facilities was more common among pupils attending schools from high/medium SES. Use of greenspace for physical activity was reported among pupils from all schools, but was more common among those from low SES schools. Pupils were, in general, satisfied with the facilities available at school, but felt time for physical education could be increased. Findings may help inform interventions, aimed at promoting physical activity at local level.
In many countries, financial assistance is awarded to physicians who settle in an area that is designated as a shortage area to prevent unequal accessibility to primary health care. Today, however, policy makers use fairly simple methods to define health care accessibility, with physician-to-population ratios (PPRs) within predefined administrative boundaries being overwhelmingly favoured. Our purpose is to verify whether these simple methods are accurate enough for adequately designating medical shortage areas and explore how these perform relative to more advanced GIS-based methods.
Using a geographical information system (GIS), we conduct a nation-wide study of accessibility to primary care physicians in Belgium using four different methods: PPR, distance to closest physician, cumulative opportunity, and floating catchment area (FCA) methods.
The official method used by policy makers in Belgium (calculating PPR per physician zone) offers only a crude representation of health care accessibility, especially because large contiguous areas (physician zones) are considered. We found substantial differences in the number and spatial distribution of medical shortage areas when applying different methods.
The assessment of spatial health care accessibility and concomitant policy initiatives are affected by and dependent on the methodology used. The major disadvantage of PPR methods is its aggregated approach, masking subtle local variations. Some simple GIS methods overcome this issue, but have limitations in terms of conceptualisation of physician interaction and distance decay. Conceptually, the enhanced 2-step floating catchment area (E2SFCA) method, an advanced FCA method, was found to be most appropriate for supporting areal health care policies, since this method is able to calculate accessibility at a small scale (e.g. census tracts), takes interaction between physicians into account, and considers distance decay. While at present in health care research methodological differences and modifiable areal unit problems have remained largely overlooked, this manuscript shows that these aspects have a significant influence on the insights obtained. Hence, it is important for policy makers to ascertain to what extent their policy evaluations hold under different scales of analysis and when different methods are used.
One main reason for promoting sports participation is the assumption that sports participation creates several positive effects for society. If so, the question arises how sports participation can be promoted effectively. Research has shown that the quantity and quality of the sport infrastructure has an impact on the sports participation of residents. However, there is a lack of evidence regarding different sizes of municipalities. This paper analyses whether there are differences in metropolitan and medium-sized municipalities using multi-level analyses. On the individual level, data from population surveys in metropolitan (n=11,715) and medium-sized municipalities (n=9,302) is used. On the infrastructure, data about sport supply was provided by the municipalities and segmented into urban districts (n=25 for the metropolis and n=53 for the medium-sized municipalities). The results show that the supply of swimming pools is of importance in metropolitan areas whereas a good supply of sports fields has a significant impact on sports participation in medium-sized municipalities. This leads to the conclusion that different types of municipalities can increase sports participation by offering a good supply of particular sports facilities to all groups of the population. These differences must be considered by policy makers.
Previous research has shown that participation in different sports can be predicted using a socioeconomic model. However, the importance of sport infrastructure for sport participation in different sports has been mostly ignored. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of various types of sport facilities on participation in different sports. Using multi-level analyses, an assortment of sport participation surveys with an overall sample size of n=9302, combined with data concerning the municipalities' sport infrastructure are used to test for the effect of infrastructure on sport participation. The results imply that different sports are impacted by different indicators, and that substitution effects could occur. The findings suggest, for example, that municipalities that are aware of the limited supply of swimming pools should promote sport participation in running, through emphasizing the sport opportunities available in parks.
Background
Physical activity is considered as a major component of a healthy lifestyle. However, few studies have examined the relationships between the spatial accessibility to sport facilities and sport practice with a sufficient degree of specificity. The aim of this study was to investigate the associations between the spatial accessibility to specific types of sports facilities and the practice of the corresponding sports after carefully controlling for various individual socio-demographic characteristics and neighborhood socioeconomic variables.
Methods
Data from the RECORD Study involving 7290 participants recruited in 2007–2008, aged 30–79 years, and residing in the Paris metropolitan area were analyzed. Four categories of sports were studied: team sports, racket sports, swimming and related activities, and fitness. Spatial accessibility to sport facilities was measured with two complementary approaches that both take into account the street network (distance to the nearest facility and count of facilities around the dwelling). Associations between the spatial accessibility to sport facilities and the practice of the corresponding sports were assessed using multilevel logistic regression after adjusting for individual and contextual characteristics.
Results
High individual education and high household income were associated with the practice of racket sports, swimming or related activities, and fitness over the previous 7 days. The spatial accessibility to swimming pools was associated with swimming and related sports, even after adjustment for individual/contextual factors. The spatial accessibility to facilities was not related to the practice of other sports. High neighborhood income was associated with the practice of a racket sport and fitness.
Conclusions
Accessibility is a multi-dimensional concept that integrates educational, financial, and geographical aspects. Our work supports the evidence that strategies to increase participation in sport activities should improve the spatial and financial access to specific facilities, but also address educational disparities in sport practice.
Despite spending more than any other nation on medical care per person, the United States ranks behind other industrialized nations in key health performance measures. A main cause is the deep disparities in access to care and health outcomes. Federal programs such as the designations of Medically Underserved Areas/Populations and Health Professional Shortage Areas are designed to boost the number of health professionals serving these areas and to help alleviate the access problem. Their effectiveness relies first and foremost on an accurate measure of accessibility so that resources can be allocated to truly needy areas. Various measures of accessibility need to be integrated into one framework for comparison and evaluation. Optimization methods can be used to improve the distribution and supply of health care providers to maximize service coverage, minimize travel needs of patients, limit the number of facilities, and maximize health or access equality. Inequality in health care access comes at a personal and societal price, evidenced in disparities in health outcomes, including late-stage cancer diagnosis. This review surveys recent literature on the three named issues with emphasis on methodological advancements and implications for public policy.
Previous research has drawn attention to the importance of measuring accessibility to public transit services for transport planning and decision-making purposes and to the use of GIS to produce accessibility maps. Existing measures have been criticised for their lack of sophistication and reliance on simple operations such as Euclidean buffering. This article introduces an accessibility measure based on enhanced ‘floating catchment’ techniques, which have to date not been applied to measure access to public transport opportunities. We demonstrate that, after essential modifications to reflect the characteristics of transit service provision, this approach captures many detailed aspects of accessibility including proximity, the balance between service supply and demand, cumulative opportunity and temporal availability. We illustrate its application using a case study based in South Wales, integrating publicly available digital transport timetables and information on bus stop locations with geospatial analysis tools to provide a realistic appraisal of bus transit accessibility. Such measures could clearly form the basis of future studies of social exclusion and access to public transport opportunities. We conclude by drawing attention to the potential for including more intelligent demand-side and supply-side modelling inputs and by reiterating the policy importance of developing more accurate evaluations of the current and future state of the public transport network.
The aim of this study is to explore whether availability of sports facilities, parks, and neighbourhood social capital (NSC) and their interaction are associated with leisure time sports participation among Dutch adolescents.
Cross-sectional analyses were conducted on complete data from the last wave of the YouRAction evaluation trial. Adolescents (n = 852) completed a questionnaire asking for sports participation, perceived NSC and demographics. Ecometric methods were used to aggregate perceived NSC to zip code level. Availability of sports facilities and parks was assessed by means of geographic information systems within the zip-code area and within a 1600 meter buffer. Multilevel logistic regression analyses, with neighborhood and individual as levels, were conducted to examine associations between physical and social environmental factors and leisure time sports participation. Simple slopes analysis was conducted to decompose interaction effects.
NSC was significantly associated with sports participation (OR: 3.51 (95%CI: 1.18;10.41)) after adjustment for potential confounders. Availability of sports facilities and availability of parks were not associated with sports participation. A significant interaction between NSC and density of parks within the neighbourhood area (OR: 1.22 (90%CI: 1.01;1.34)) was found. Decomposition of the interaction term showed that adolescents were most likely to engage in leisure time sports when both availability of parks and NSC were highest.
The results of this study indicate that leisure time sports participation is associated with levels of NSC, but not with availability of parks or sports facilities. In addition, NSC and availability of parks in the zip code area interacted in such a way that leisure time sports participation is most likely among adolescents living in zip code areas with higher levels of NSC, and higher availability of parks. Hence, availability of parks appears only to be important for leisure time sports participation when NSC is high.
Objective: To investigate the duration, intensity and type of physical activity undertaken by people aged 60 years and over in relation to their reported levels of participation in social activities and their perceptions of their neighbourhood.
Design: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey of older people attending two luncheon and eight social clubs in two London boroughs.
Methods: The questionnaires were distributed to volunteers and sought information on the following topics: physical and social activities undertaken, perceived health and weight status, views about local amenities and neighbourhood, and demographic data.
Results: The sample comprised 225 adults aged 60 years and over (response rate: 88.6 per cent; mean age 75.0 years; 76.7 per cent women). Only 20.8 per cent of the sample met the recommended levels of physical activity if heavy housework and heavy gardening were not included, rising to 48.0 per cent when these activities were included. Reported good health status was strongly associated with higher levels of physical activity although physical activity significantly declined with advancing age. Living in an area with good recreational facilities and taking part in social entertainment were significantly associated with being physically active at the recommended levels.
Conclusions: Good health status is associated with levels of physical activity in older people. Heavy housework is an important physical activity and provides an activity for maintaining functional independence in old age.
Physical activity is associated with access to recreational facilities such as sports fields. Because it is not clear whether objectively- or subjectively-assessed access to facilities exerts a stronger influence on physical activity, we investigated the association between the objective and perceived accessibility of sport fields and the levels of self-reported physical activity among adults in Edmonton, Canada. A sample of 2879 respondents was surveyed regarding their socio-demographics, health status, self-efficacy, levels of physical activity, as well as their perceptions of built environment in relation to physical activity. Neighbourhood-level data were obtained for each respondent based on their residence. Accessibility to facilities was assessed using the enhanced Two-Step Floating Catchment Area method. Geographic Information Systems were employed. A logistic regression was performed to predict physical activity using individual- and neighbourhood-level variables. Women, older individuals, and individuals with higher educational attainment were less likely to be physically active. Also, individuals with higher self-efficacy and higher objectively-assessed access to facilities were more likely to be physically active. Interventions that integrate provision of relevant programs for various population groups and of improved recreational facilities may contribute to sport fields becoming catalysts for physical activity by generating movement both on the site and in the neighbourhood.
Reducing spatial access disparities to healthcare services is a growing priority for healthcare planners especially among developed countries with aging populations. There is thus a pressing need to determine which populations do not enjoy access to healthcare, yet efforts to quantify such disparities in spatial accessibility have been hampered by a lack of satisfactory measurements and methods. This study compares an optimised and the conventional version of the two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method to assess spatial accessibility to medical clinics in Montreal.
We first computed catchments around existing medical clinics of Montreal Island based on the shortest network distance. Population nested in dissemination areas were used to determine potential users of a given medical clinic. To optimize the method, medical clinics (supply) were weighted by the number of physicians working in each clinic, while the previous year's medical clinic users were computed by ten years age group was used as weighting coefficient for potential users of each medical clinic (demand).
The spatial accessibility score (SA) increased considerably with the optimisation method. Within a distance of 1 Km, for instance, the maximum clinic accessible for 1,000 persons is 2.4 when the conventional method is used, compared with 27.7 for the optimized method. The t-test indicates a significant difference between the conventional and the optimized 2SFCA methods. Also, results of the differences between the two methods reveal a clustering of residuals when distance increases. In other words, a low threshold would be associated with a lack of precision.
Results of this study suggest that a greater effort must be made ameliorate spatial accessibility to medical clinics in Montreal. To ensure that health resources are allocated in the interest of the population, health planners and the government should consider a strategy in the sitting of future clinics which would provide spatial access to the greatest number of people.
Physical inactivity is one of the most important public health issues in the U.S. and internationally. Increasingly, links are being identified between various elements of the physical-or built-environment and physical activity. To understand the impact of the built environment on physical activity, the development of high-quality measures is essential. Three categories of built environment data are being used: (1) perceived measures obtained by telephone interview or self-administered questionnaires; (2) observational measures obtained using systematic observational methods (audits); and (3) archival data sets that are often layered and analyzed with GIS. This review provides a critical assessment of these three types of built-environment measures relevant to the study of physical activity. Among perceived measures, 19 questionnaires were reviewed, ranging in length from 7 to 68 questions. Twenty audit tools were reviewed that cover community environments (i.e., neighborhoods, cities), parks, and trails. For GIS-derived measures, more than 50 studies were reviewed. A large degree of variability was found in the operationalization of common GIS measures, which include population density, land-use mix, access to recreational facilities, and street pattern. This first comprehensive examination of built-environment measures demonstrates considerable progress over the past decade, showing diverse environmental variables available that use multiple modes of assessment. Most can be considered first-generation measures, so further development is needed. In particular, further research is needed to improve the technical quality of measures, understand the relevance to various population groups, and understand the utility of measures for science and public health.
This study examined the associations of the perceived and objective environment with adolescent engagement in sports activities and walking and cycling in leisure time. It also explored the degree of agreement between objective and perceived availability of physical activity (PA) facilities in neighborhoods.
Cross-sectional data on physical activity, the perceived availability of physical activity opportunities (perceived physical environment) was assessed through a questionnaire and the objective availability of PA opportunities (objective physical environment) was obtained through GIS data. The final sample included 654 adolescents with a mean age of 14.1 (SD = 1.2) years.
Perceived availability of sports facilities and parks was significantly associated with engaging in sports (OR: 1.73; 95% CI: 1.16-2.56) and with walking and cycling in leisure time (OR: 1.66; 95% CI: 1.07-2.57) respectively. Agreement between objective and perceived environment was low to moderate with Kappa values ranging from -0.005 to 0.053.
The perceived environment was the stronger correlate of PA behavior among adolescents. There were substantial differences between assessments of objective and perceived physical environment.
This paper presents an enhancement of the two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method for measuring spatial accessibility, addressing the problem of uniform access within the catchment by applying weights to different travel time zones to account for distance decay. The enhancement is proved to be another special case of the gravity model. When applying this enhanced 2SFCA (E2SFCA) to measure the spatial access to primary care physicians in a study area in northern Illinois, we find that it reveals spatial accessibility pattern that is more consistent with intuition and delineates more spatially explicit health professional shortage areas. It is easy to implement in GIS and straightforward to interpret.
This article synthesizes two GIS-based accessibility measures into one framework, and applies the methods to examining spatial accessibility to primary health care in the Chicago ten-county region. The floating catchment area (FCA) method defines the service area of physicians by a threshold travel time while accounting for the availability of physicians by their surrounded demands. The gravity-based method considers a nearby physician more accessible than a remote one and discounts a physician's availability by a gravity-based potential. The former is a special case of the latter. Based on the 2000 Census and primary care physician data, this research assesses the variation of spatial accessibility to primary care in the Chicago region, and analyzes the sensitivity of results by experimenting with ranges of threshold travel times in the FCA method and travel friction coefficients in the gravity model. The methods may be used to help the US Department of Health and Human Services and state health departments improve designation of Health Professional Shortage Areas.
The purpose of this study was to determine whether the availability and accessibility of physical activity resources differed by neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) in a small U.S. city (population = 133,046). U.S. census tracts (N =32) were used to represent neighborhoods and categorized into high, medium, or low SES on the basis of the percentage of unemployed individuals, per capita income, and percentage of the population below the poverty threshold. We developed a geographic information system to generate a comprehensive list of physical activity resources available within each census tract in the city. We identified 112 parks, 33 sport facilities, 15 fitness clubs, 11 community centers, and 5 walking/biking trails. The total number of physical activity resources varied by neighborhood SES (p <.05); low-SES (M =4.5-/+2.3) and medium-SES (M =4.9-/+2.6) neighborhoods had significantly fewer resources than high-SES (M =8.4-/+3.5) neighborhoods. Low-, medium-, and high-SES neighborhoods did not differ on the number of pay-for-use facilities; however, low-SES (M =3.1-/+1.5) and medium-SES (M =3.8-/+1.6) neighborhoods had significantly fewer free-for-use resources than high- (M =6.1-/+2.4) SES neighborhoods (p <.01). Data suggest that individuals from lower SES neighborhoods may have limited ability to control their physical activity in the face of inaccessible environments. Community research and promotion efforts should include assessment and targeting of available and accessible physical activity resources.
This paper presents a geographic information system (GIS) based floating catchment method for identifying physician shortage areas. The traditional designation methods are primarily regional availability measures, which use administrative boundaries such as counties as the basic spatial units for calculating physician to population ratios and designate shortage based on those ratios. Such approaches have been criticized for their inability to account for either the spatial variations of population demand and physician supply within those boundaries or for population-physician interactions across them. The floating catchment method addresses the internal spatial distribution problem by deriving population data from a smaller unit, the census tract. The potential cross border patient-physician interaction is taken into consideration by using circles of reasonable radius around each census tract centroid as the basic spatial units, which can encompass areas on either side of an administrative border. By varying the radius of the catchment circle, this paper demonstrates that the physician to population ratio is scale dependent and that the greatest variability of the ratios and shortages occur at the most local scales (< 20 miles), which argues for using finer spatial resolution data in shortage designation practice.
We examined associations between neighborhood demographic characteristics and the availability of commercial physical activity-related outlets by zip code across the United States.
Multivariate analyses were conducted to assess the availability of 4 types of outlets: (1) physical fitness facilities, (2) membership sports and recreation clubs, (3) dance facilities, and (4) public golf courses. Commercial outlet data were linked by zip code to US Census Bureau population and socioeconomic data.
Results showed that commercial physical activity-related facilities were less likely to be present in lower-income neighborhoods and in neighborhoods with higher proportions of African American residents, residents with His-panic ethnicity, and residents of other racial minority backgrounds. In addition, these neighborhoods had fewer such facilities available.
Lack of availability of facilities that enable and promote physical activity may, in part, underpin the lower levels of activity observed among populations of low socioeconomic status and minority backgrounds.
It has commonly been suggested (including by this author) that individual or household deprivation (for example, low income) is amplified by area level deprivation (for example, lack of affordable nutritious food or facilities for physical activity in the neighbourhood).
The idea of deprivation amplification has some intuitive attractiveness and helps divert attention away from purely individual determinants of diet and physical activity, and towards health promoting or health damaging features of the physical and social environment. Such environmental features may be modifiable, and environmental changes may help promote healthier behaviors. However, recent empirical examination of the distribution of facilities and resources shows that location does not always disadvantage poorer neighbourhoods. This suggests that we need: a) to ensure that theories and policies are based on up-to-date empirical evidence on the socio-economic distribution of neighbourhood resources, and b) to engage in further research on the relative importance of, and interactions between, individual and environmental factors in shaping behavior.
In this debate paper I suggest that it may not always be true that poorer neighbourhoods are more likely to lack health promoting resources, and to be exposed to more health damaging resources. The spatial distribution of environmental resources by area socioeconomic status may vary between types of resource, countries, and time periods. It may also be that the presence or absence of resources is less important than their quality, their social meaning, or local perceptions of their accessibility and relevance.
Residents’ recreation behavior is highly influenced by their level of access to recreation opportunities. Distance is an important component of access. The purpose of this study was to measure levels of access to public beaches in the Detroit Metropolitan Area (DMA) using four travel distances (1, 6, 10, and 20 miles) and three access measures (minimum distance, travel cost, and covering), with the intent of demonstrating the sensitivity of findings to both the distance and measure employed. Findings indicate that while public beaches are geographically accessible for a majority of the DMA population within 20 miles according to all access measures, at distances less than 20 miles level of access varies substantially with the access measure used. Future access studies should consider a range of travel distances rather than the single distance typical of most prior analyses and should also be sensitive to the differentials produced by the access measure employed.
Introduction: Diverse combinations of built environment (BE) features for physical activity (PA) are understudied. This study explored whether patterns of GIS-derived BE features explained objective and self-reported PA, sedentary behavior, and BMI.
Methods: Neighborhood Quality of Life Study participants (N1⁄42,199, aged 20–65 years, 48.2% female, 26% ethnic minority) were sampled in 2001–2005 from Seattle / King County WA and Baltimore MD / Washington DC regions. Their addresses were geocoded to compute net residential density, land use mix, retail floor area ratio, intersection density, public transit, and public park and private recreation facility densities using a 1-km network buffer. Latent profile analyses (LPAs) were estimated from these variables. Multilevel regression models compared profiles on accelerometer- measured moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA) and self-reported PA, adjusting for covariates and clustering. Analyses were conducted in 2013–2014.
Results: Seattle region LPAs yielded four profiles, including low walkability/transit/recreation (L-L-L); mean walkability/transit/recreation (M-M-M); moderately high walkability/transit/ recreation (MH-MH-MH); and high walkability/transit/recreation (H-HH). All measures were higher in the HHH than the LLL profile (difference of 17.1 minutes/day for MVPA, 146.5 minutes/week for walking for transportation, 58.2 minutes/week for leisure-time PA, and 2.2 BMI points; all po0.05). Baltimore region LPAs yielded four profiles, including L-L-L; M-M-M; high land use mix, transit, and recreation (HLU-HT-HRA); and high intersection density, high retail floor area ratio (HID-HRFAR). HLU-HT-HRA and L-L-L differed by 12.3 MVPA minutes/day; HID-HRFAR and L-L-L differed by 157.4 minutes/week for walking for trans- portation (all ps<0.05).
Conclusions: Patterns of environmental features explain greater differences in adults’ PA than the four-component walkability index.
Central to the practice of urban planning is the provision of services, which has potential public health and social welfare implications. However, service area analysis, typically, employs arbitrary travel-distance thresholds. Through this study we provide an empirical investigation into the durations and distances that respondents are willing to travel in order to engage in various sports and recreation activities. This research uses time-diary data, augmented with global positioning system information, to investigate individually based and objectively measured travel thresholds (which define travelsheds) for various sports and recreation activities in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Results accord with national time-diary data, and indicate that duration-based and distance-based travelsheds are generally in the order of 15-30 minutes and 4-20 km, respectively. Georeferenced time-diary data provide unique insights into travel thresholds, which may be used to help improve accessibility and thereby increase the frequency and duration of physical activity engagement.
Research at the confluence of accessibility, equity and health is flourishing. And yet, there is only slow and modest progress in terms of improving the spatial and temporal accuracy of measuring accessibility and equity of accessibility to health care services. This paper critically reviews the latest methodological and empirical research developments and trends in this area through a transport geography lens. More specifically, this paper discusses recent accomplishments in terms of modeling accessibility and provides a systematic and comprehensive literature review of their application in empirical studies of health care delivery. Based on this literature review a research agenda is put forward, identifying knowledge gaps that transport researchers can help to fill. These knowledge gaps pertain to the need for more spatially disaggregated, individualized and temporally-aware accessibility metrics, more sophisticated geocomputational tools to operationalize such metrics and improved measurement of equity considerations in empirical research.
Objective:
We examined whether change in distance to or number of sports facilities is related to change in metabolic equivalent task (MET) hours/week.
Method:
25,834 Finnish Public Sector study cohort participants reported their weekly physical activity in 2000 and 2008. Distances from each participant's home to the nearest facility and number of facilities within 500m from home were calculated from geographic coordinates. We assessed changes in weekly MET hours of physical activity between the baseline and the follow-up in relation to change in distance to the nearest facility (remained close, decreased, remained distant, increased) and number of facilities <500m from home (remained high, increased, remained low, decreased).
Results:
The average decrease in MET hours was greater for those whose distance to a sports facility increased (-1.4 (95% CI -3.8--0.96)) (vs. remained close). The same was observed for those for whom the number of facilities near home decreased (-2.35 (95% CI -4.84-0.14)) (vs. remained high). Increase in availability was not related to increase in MET hours.
Conclusions:
An increase in distance to and decrease in number of sports facilities were associated with a decrease in physical activity suggesting that changes in availability of facilities may affect physical activity levels.
This paper examines sport participation from an environmental perspective by considering the dynamic role of the sportscape (built-form and supporting infrastructure) in enabling, facilitating and promoting youth sport participation. Complementing recent work by Wicker et al. (2013), we conduct a case study of the ‘geography of sport’ in the Greater Toronto Area. In the process we introduce the concept of facility ‘gravitas’ to capture the attractiveness or ‘magnetism’ of sportscape entities and thereby acknowledge the multifaceted sets of environmental factors (including the bricks-and-mortar of facilities and the supporting mechanisms such as transportation, coaches and clubs) that influence sport participation. The results demonstrate that the geography of sport is not only about where sport venue built-forms are located, but also what types of sport infrastructure are available. To develop a better understanding of sport participation it is important to assess the capacity and quality of the sportscape along with other supporting structures and facilitators. The paper points to the implications for managers and policy makers from this perspective.
Few measures of healthcare accessibility have considered multiple transportation modes when people seek healthcare. Based on the framework of the 2 Step Floating Catchment Area Method (2SFCAM), we proposed an innovative method to incorporate transportation modes into the accessibility estimation. Taking Florida, USA, as a study area, we illustrated the implementation of the multi-mode 2SFCAM, and compared the accessibility estimates with those from the traditional single-mode 2SFCAM. The results suggest that the multi-modal method, by accounting for heterogeneity in populations, provides more realistic accessibility estimations, and thus offers a better guidance for policy makers to mitigate health inequity issues.
Research on physical activity (PA) has expanded in recent years to examine environmental influences that enhance or limit the opportunities people have to be active. The purpose of this study was to review and critically examine evidence related to parks and recreation as features of the built environment and the relationship of these settings to PA. Fifty studies were retrieved from four major databases that reported an empirical relationship between parks or recreation variables and PA variables. Mixed associations with PA were observed for different types of parks or recreation settings, while proximity to parks or recreation was generally associated with increased PA. Shortcomings exist in this literature and many opportunities for researching parks, recreation, and active living are evident for the future.
Objective: The aim of this study was to identify promoting and inhibiting correlates associated with the physical activity (PA) of children and adolescents (aged 3–18). The intention was to demonstrate the complexity of correlates of PA and to determine possible influencing factors.
Design: A systematic review of reviews.
Methods: Systematic database research was carried out in Medline, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, PsycInfo, Springer Link and Thieme Connect. Inclusion criteria were that the study: (a) was classified as a systematic review with or without meta-analysis; (b) was published between 2000 and 2009; (c) dealt with children and adolescents aged 3–18; (d) had as its dependent variable any measure of overall PA; and (e) reviewed associations between quantitatively measured variables and PA. The internal validity of the systematic reviews thus identified was evaluated using a validated quality instrument.
Results: Nine systematic reviews without meta-analysis and one systematic review with meta-analysis were selected. Altogether 16 correlates were identified which were consistently associated with PA of children and/or adolescents: sex, age, ethnicity, parental education, family income, socioeconomic status, perceived competence, self-efficacy, goal orientation/motivation, perceived barriers, participation in community sports, parental support, support from significant others, access to sport/recreational facilities und time outdoors.
Conclusions: Although the findings of the reviews covered are to some extent heterogeneous, it is possible to identify consistent correlates of PA in children and adolescents. The results show that PA is a complex and multi-dimensional behaviour determined by numerous biological, psychological, sociocultural and environmental factors.
Accessibility is a concept of continuing relevance in transportation research. A number of different measures of accessibility, defined as the potential to reach spatially dispersed opportunities, have been proposed in the literature, and used to address various substantive planning and policy questions. Our objective in this paper is to conduct a review of various commonly used measures of accessibility, with a particular view to clarifying their normative (i.e. prescriptive), as well as positive (i.e. descriptive) aspects. This is a distinction that has seldom been made in the literature and that helps to better understand the meaning of alternative ways to implement the concept of accessibility. Our discussion of the positive and normative aspects of accessibility measurements is illustrated using the city of Montreal, Canada, as a case study. The example highlights the differences in the measured levels of accessibility depending on implementation. Comparison of the two by means of a relative indicator of accessibility helps to identify the gap between desired (as normative defined) and actual (as revealed) accessibility levels.
Purpose: This study examined factors related to two sources of physical activity for youth: active use of recreation sites and active transport to recreation sites.
Methods: Parents of children (n = 87) and matched pairs of parents and adolescents (n = 124 pairs) in three US cities reported on youths' active use of, proximity to, and walking/biking to 12 recreation sites and on neighborhood walkability and safety. Multivariate regression models evaluated factors associated with youths' frequent site use and active transport to sites.
Results: Proximity to the site was associated with frequent use of large parks and public open space. Walking/biking to the site was associated with frequent use of most sites (indoor recreation sites, small and large parks, basketball courts, walking/running tracks, school recreation sites, playgrounds, and public open space). After controlling for proximity and demographic factors, active transport to sites remained significantly associated (P < 0.05) with frequent use of four sites for children (indoor recreation, walking/running tracks, school recreation facilities, and public open space) and all but three sites for adolescents (indoor recreation, playfields/courts, and beach/lake/rivers). Adolescents' active transport to more sites was most positively related to higher perceived traffic safety and to better pedestrian infrastructure and was negatively related to crime threat. Adolescents with driver's licenses walked/biked to recreation sites less often.
Conclusions: Active transport was strongly associated with the use of multiple recreation sites by children and adolescents, even when accounting for proximity and demographic factors. Adolescents living in neighborhoods with better traffic safety walked/biked to more recreation sites for physical activity. Findings support the need for built environments and transportation policies that facilitate safe, active transport to recreation sites for youth physical activity.
The aim of the study was to evaluate the association of the availability of sports facilities and socioeconomic environment with jogging, swimming and gym use in Spain. The indicators of availability of sports facilities were the number of swimming pools and the number of gyms per 10,000 population. The indicators of socioeconomic environment were average provincial income and provincial unemployment rate. The number of sports facilities was not related with either swimming or gym use and the indicators of socioeconomic environment were not associated with swimming in either sex, or with gym use in men. The findings of this study do not support the hypotheses proposed in previous investigations to explain the consistent relation between socioeconomic environment and lack of physical activity.
We conducted an environmental justice study of the spatial distribution of sport facilities, a major resource for physical activity, in the Paris Region in France. Comprehensive data of the French Census of Sport Facilities allowed us to investigate disparities not only in the spatial accessibility to facilities, but also in the characteristics of these facilities. We found that the associations between area income and the presence of facilities or favorable characteristics of these facilities varied from positive to negative depending on the facilities and on the characteristics examined. Sensitivity analyses defining area income in circular areas of different radii permitted a refined identification of areas underserved in sport facilities.
This study evaluates the role of black residential segregation and spatial access to health care in explaining the variation in late-stage diagnosis of breast cancer in metropolitan Detroit. Data pertaining to female breast cancer from 1998 to 2002 are obtained from the Michigan Cancer Surveillance Program. An isolation index is used to assess black segregation. The 2-step floating catchment area approach integrated with a Gaussian function is used to estimate the health care access. While socioeconomic factors at ZIP code level are controlled, ordinary least squares and spatial lag models are used to explore the association between the rates of late-stage diagnosis and segregation and health care access. Results suggest that living in areas with greater black segregation and poorer mammography access significantly increases the risk of late diagnosis of breast cancer. Disadvantaged populations including those with low socioeconomic status or sociocultural barriers tend to experience high rates of late diagnosis. Findings emphasize the need for heightened screening, surveillance, and intervention programs in these areas.
Geographical and political research on urban service delivery -- who benefits and why -- has proliferated during the past two decades. Overall, this literature is not characterized by a particular attention to the importance of method in drawing conclusions about spatial equity based on empirical studies. Specifically, there has been scant interest in the effect of geographic methodology on assessing the relationship between access and socioeconomic characteristics that are spatially defined. In this paper we take a spatial analytical perspective to evaluate the importance of methodology in assessing whether or not, or to what degree the distribution of urban public services is equitable. We approach this issue by means of an empirical case study of the spatial distribution of playgrounds in Tulsa, Oklahoma, relative to that of the targeted constituencies (children) and other socioeconomic indicators. In addition to the 'traditional' measure (count of facilities in an areal unit), we consider a potential measure (based on the gravity model), average travel distance, and distance to the nearest playground as indicators of accessibility. We find significant differences between the spatial patterns in these measures that are suggested by local indicators of spatial association and other techniques of exploratory spatial data analysis. The choice of access measure not only implies a particular treatment of spatial externalities but also affects conclusions about the existence of spatial mismatch and inequity.
Promoting physical activity is a public health priority, and changes in the environmental contexts of adults' activity choices are believed to be crucial. However, of the factors associated with physical activity, environmental influences are among the least understood.
Using journal scans and computerized literature database searches, we identified 19 quantitative studies that assessed the relationships with physical activity behavior of perceived and objectively determined physical environment attributes. Findings were categorized into those examining five categories: accessibility of facilities, opportunities for activity, weather, safety, and aesthetic attributes.
Accessibility, opportunities, and aesthetic attributes had significant associations with physical activity. Weather and safety showed less-strong relationships. Where studies pooled different categories to create composite variables, the associations were less likely to be statistically significant.
Physical environment factors have consistent associations with physical activity behavior. Further development of ecologic and environmental models, together with behavior-specific and context-specific measurement strategies, should help in further understanding of these associations. Prospective studies are required to identify possible causal relationships.
The inequitable geographic distribution of health care resources has long been recognized as a problem in the United States. Traditional measures, such as a simple ratio of supply to demand in an area or distance to the closest provider, are easy measures for spatial accessibility. However the former one does not consider interactions between patients and providers across administrative borders and the latter does not account for the demand side, that is, the competition for the supply. With advancements in GIS, however, better measures of geographic accessibility, variants of a gravity model, have been applied. Among them are (1) a two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method and (2) a kernel density (KD) method. This microscopic study compared these two GIS-based measures of accessibility in our case study of dialysis service centers in Chicago. Our comparison study found a significant mismatch of the accessibility ratios between the two methods. Overall, the 2SFCA method produced better accessibility ratios. There is room for further improvement of the 2SFCA method-varying the radius of service area according to the type of provider or the type of neighborhood and determining the appropriate weight equation form-still warrant further study.
The study concerns ethnicity, spatial equity, and healthcare access in the context of diversity and integration. The paper first explores how Chinese immigrants in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area choose between ethnic Chinese family physicians and other family physicians, based on a probability survey. It then applies and modifies gravity-type accessibility measures, of which a special type is the so-called floating catchment area (FCA) method, to evaluate three types of geographical accessibility in family physician utilization. The study suggests a certain degree of spatial inequality among Chinese immigrants in accessing culturally sensitive care. The paper yields important methodological and policy implications.
Using data from a large cohort of adults aged 45 to 84 years-old, we investigated whether availability of recreational resources is related to physical activity levels.
Data from a multiethnic sample of 2723 adult residents of New York City, NY; Baltimore, Md; and Forsyth County, NC, were linked to data on locations of recreational resources. We measured the availability (density) of resources within 0.5 (0.8 km), 1, 2, and 5 miles of each participant's residence and used binomial regression to investigate associations of density with physical activity.
After adjustment for potential confounders, individuals in the tertile of participants residing in areas with the highest density of resources were more likely to report physical activity during a typical week than were individuals in the lowest tertile. Associations between availability of recreational resources and physical activity levels were not present for the smallest area assessed (0.5 miles) but were present for areas ranging from 1 to 5 miles. These associations were slightly stronger among minority and low-income residents.
Availability of resources may be 1 of several environmental factors that influence individuals' physical activity behaviors.
Leisure-time physical activity patterns are low and socially patterned. Ecologic studies of the provision of exercise facilities indicate that in areas of deprivation, there is a trend toward reduced availability of exercise facilities compared with more affluent areas. Existing studies are restricted to single geographic areas or regions. In this study, national-level data were used to examine the relationship between neighborhood deprivation and the density of physical activity facilities in England.
A database of all indoor exercise facilities in England was obtained, and facilities were linked to administrative areas and assigned a deprivation score. Census data were used to calculate the density of physical activity facilities per 1000 people per quintile of deprivation. The exercise facilities data were collected in 2005, and the analysis was conducted in 2006.
When all 5552 facilities were considered, there was a statistically significant negative relationship (p<0.001) between area deprivation score and the density of physical activity facilities. A similar relationship was observed when public and private facilities were examined separately. When only swimming pools were examined, a negative association was observed for public pools (p<0.0001) but not those that were private (p=0.50), which were more evenly distributed among quintiles of area deprivation.
The availability of physical activity facilities declines with level of deprivation. Areas in most need of facilities to assist people live physically active lifestyles have fewer resources.
The objective of this systematic review of observational studies was to gain insight into potential determinants of various types and intensities of physical activity among adult men and women. Studies were retrieved from Medline, PsycInfo, Embase and Social scisearch. The ANGELO framework was used to classify environmental factors. In total, 47 publications were identified. Social support and having a companion for physical activity were found to be convincingly associated with different types of physical activity [(neighbourhood) walking, bicycling, vigorous physical activity/sports, active commuting, leisure-time physical activity in general, sedentary lifestyle, moderately intense physical activity and a combination of moderately intense and vigorous activity]. Availability of physical activity equipment was convincingly associated with vigorous physical activity/sports and connectivity of trails with active commuting. Other possible, but less consistent correlates of physical activity were availability, accessibility and convenience of recreational facilities. No evidence was found for differences between men and women. In conclusion, supportive evidence was found for only very few presumed environmental determinants. However, most studies used cross-sectional designs and non-validated measures of environments and/or behaviour. Therefore, no strong conclusions can be drawn and more research of better quality is clearly needed.
A significant number of American youth do not participate in sufficient levels of physical activity.
This article reports the association between the availability of commercial physical activity-related facilities and self-reported physical activity behavior among United States adolescents. Geographic identifiers at the ZIP-code level were used to combine repeated cross-sections of individual-level data on 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade adolescents from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) Survey with external commercial physical activity-related facility outlet density measures obtained from business lists from Dun and Bradstreet for the years 1997 through 2003. The estimation samples based on questions from different survey forms included a total of 195,702 observations on which information on physical activity (sports, athletics, or exercise) was available and 58,876 observations on which information on vigorous exercise behavior was available.
The results showed a statistically significant but very small association between local-area per capita availability of commercial physical activity-related facilities and physical activity behavior among U.S. adolescents. An additional local-area facility per 10,000 capita was associated with only a 0.22 percentage point increase in frequent vigorous exercise among the full sample of adolescents. By gender and grade level, the study found significant associations among female and older students: increasing availability from a low (1 facility) to a high (8 facilities) number of local-area facilities was associated with a 6.6% and 9.0% increase in frequent physical activity and frequent vigorous exercise among 12th-grade girls, respectively, and a 6.4% increase in frequent vigorous exercise among 12th-grade boys.
Improving the availability of commercial physical activity-related opportunities among underserved populations may help to increase activity levels among older adolescents and girls.
Differences in availability of recreational resources may contribute to racial and socioeconomic status (SES) disparities in physical activity. Variations in the location and density of recreational resources were examined by SES and racial composition of neighborhoods.
Densities of resources available in recreational facilities and parks were estimated for census tracts between April 2003 and June 2004 in North Carolina, New York, and Maryland using kernel estimation. The probability of not having a facility or park was modeled by tract racial composition and SES, adjusting for population and area, using binomial regression in 2006. Mean densities of tract resources were modeled by SES and racial composition using linear regression.
Minority neighborhoods were significantly more likely than white neighborhoods not to have recreational facilities (relative probability [RP]=3.27 [95% CI=2.11-5.07] and 8.60 [95% CI=4.48-16.51], for black and Hispanic neighborhoods, respectively). Low-income neighborhoods were 4.5 times more likely to not have facilities than high-income areas (95% CI=2.87-7.12). Parks were more equitably distributed. Most resources located in recreational facilities required a fee and were less dense in minority and low-income areas. Those located inside parks were usually free to use, sports-related, and denser in poor and minority neighborhoods.
Recreational facilities and the resources they offer are not equitably distributed. The presence of parks in poor and minority areas suggest that improving the types and quality of resources in parks could be an important strategy to increase physical activity and reduce racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities.
Several countries spend large sums of public money building sports facilities. Still, our knowledge about the effect of these means is limited. The objectives in this review are (1) to identify relevant knowledge of how sports facilities influence young people's physical activity, (2) to clarify the status of examined and non-examined factors and (3) to propose a conceptual model to guide future judgments. Relevant studies were located from searches in computerized databases and the bibliography of reviews. Ecological system theory uses the theoretical framework. The findings encompass 239 independent samples located in 43 studies, primarily from the field of public health. Based on these and the framework, we have developed a modified, conceptual model. The model stresses the interaction between the demographic, personal and interpersonal characteristics of the user, the consideration of access and facility characteristics and the level where this takes place. The most consistent data were found at the mesolevel and were correlated to access and user characteristics. Knowledge gaps were found at the microlevel and with regard to facility characteristics. We also know too little with respect to subgroups' different behavior in various physical settings. Finally, there is a need to confirm/disconfirm less consistent findings.
Local Sport Profile” Sport England
- Sport England
Sport England. 2016. "Local Sport Profile" Sport England. Accessed November 24 2016. http://
localsportprofile.sportengland.org/.
Appropriate Facilities: Evidence to Support the Community Sport Strategy. Cardiff: Sport Wales
- Sport Wales
Sport Wales. 2012. Appropriate Facilities: Evidence to Support the Community Sport Strategy. Cardiff:
Sport Wales.
A Vision for Sport in Wales. Cardiff: Sport Wales
- Sport Wales
Sport Wales. 2013. A Vision for Sport in Wales. Cardiff: Sport Wales.
Facilities for Future Generations: A Blueprint for Sport and Active Recreation in Wales. Cardiff: Sport Wales
- Sport Wales
Sport Wales. 2016. Facilities for Future Generations: A Blueprint for Sport and Active Recreation in Wales.
Cardiff: Sport Wales.